Sea Witch by Virginia Kantra Read Free Book Online Page A

it lift and roll her,

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    let it seize and take her, let herself glide, surrounded and immersed in
    pure sensation.

    Sunlight struck through the darkening waves, through swaying
    forests of kelp and rocks teeming with life, with barnacles and limpets,
    seaweed and anemones. Here was grace. Here was freedom.

    Here was home.

    She plunged through the cool, dark water, leaving thought behind.
    Her worries streamed up and away like a chain of silver bubbles.

    * * * *

    She could do this, first-year teacher Lucy Hunter assured herself at
    the end-of-year assembly. She could survive another summer on the
    island. She had before. Twenty-two of them, for God’s sake.

    She smiled encouragement at Hannah Bly, fidgeting with the rest of
    the island school chorus on a platform stage under the basketball goal.
    Students and parents packed the community center. Folding chairs
    squeaked on the wooden floor. The scent of coffee brewing in the lobby
    overlaid the gym smells of dust and sweat.

    The important thing was to keep busy. She could run every morning
    and do lesson plans in the afternoon. The garden project she supervised
    met twice a week. She volunteered at the church and the library. With a
    little juggling, a little luck, she could stay out of the house and avoid the
    beach entirely until school began again.

    “Takes you back, doesn’t it?” her brother Caleb murmured low
    behind her.

    Startled, Lucy turned her head. She had glimpsed him before the
    program started, surrounded by men eager to shake the hand of the
    island’s returning war hero. But as soon as the children launched into
    their closing song, she figured Caleb would slip out to the parking lot to
    direct traffic.

    She felt a glow of pleasure he would seek her out instead.

    “It’s nice to have you here.”

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    “For a change.”

    Caleb had raised her since . . . well, since she was in diapers. After
    their mother disappeared, taking their thirteen-year -old brother with her,
    there hadn’t been anyone else to do the job. Certainly not their father,
    who had responded to his wife’s desertion by retreating to his boat and
    the bottle.

    Caleb had left for college the year Lucy started third grade. But she
    remembered him standing at the back of the room for her end-of-year
    assemblies—her tall, kind, impossibly cool, remarkably tolerant older
    brother.

    “You came as often as you could.”

    “Not often enough.” Caleb stared out at the rows of folding chairs
    filled with parents and grandparents. The entire Hopkins family had
    turned out to recognize son Matt’s graduation from the high school on the
    mainland. Regina Barone, in black pencil jeans and a chic white blouse,
    sat beside her mother, Antonia, in a purple velour track suit to see Nick
    advance a grade. “I missed your college graduation. ”

    “You were busy.”

    He was in Iraq. Something else they never talked about.

    Lucy tried again. “Anyway, Dad came.”

    “Yeah. You told me in your e-mail. How’d that go?”

    Not so well. Bart Hunter scowled through the ceremony and drank
    through dinner, uncomfortable in a tie and ill at ease in the busy, trendy
    restaurant she had picked out. Not even the clatter from the kitchen and
    the laughter from other tables could cover the silence between them.

    “Fine,” Lucy said. “I loved the flowers you sent.”

    His eyes narrowed. Well, she hadn’t expected he’d be as easy to
    divert as one of her five-year-olds.

    “And the check,” she added hastily. “That was incredibly generous.”

    47

    “I figured you could use it to move into an apartment someplace.
    Augusta, maybe, or Portland.”

    Lucy opened her mouth. Shut it.

    “Why did you come back, Lucy?” Caleb asked.

    It was a reasonable question. But then, her brother was always
    reasonable.

    Which was why she could never explain to him why she had chosen
    to return. Back to the dark, cold house where they grew up, to the drafty
    rooms haunted by the shell